Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Sharon L. Snyder

Brenda Jo Brueggemann

Images of disability pervade language and literature, yet disability is, as the volume's introduction notes, "the ubiquitous unspoken topic in contemporary culture." The twenty-five essays in Disability Studies provide perspectives on disabled people and on disability in the humanities, art, the media, medicine, psychology, the academy, and society. Edited and introduced by Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and containing an afterword by Michael Bérubé (author of Life As We Know It), the volume is rich in its cast of characters (including John Bulwer, Teresa de Cartagena, Audre Lorde, Oliver Sacks, Samuel Johnson, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman); in its powerful, authentic accounts of disabled conditions (deafness, blindness, MS, cancer, the absence of limbs); in its different settings (ancient Greece, medieval Spain, Nazi Germany, the modern United States); and in its mix of the intellectual and the emotional, of subtle theory and plainspoken autobiography.

Enabling the Humanities

Disability Studies

This volume in The SAGE Reference Series on Disability explores the arts and humanities within the lives of people with disabilities. It is one of eight volumes in the cross-disciplinary and issues-based series, which incorporates links from varied fields making up Disability Studies as volumes examine topics central to the lives of individuals with disabilities and their families. With a balance of history, theory, research, and application, specialists set out the findings and implications of research and practice for others whose current or future work involves the care and/or study of those with disabilities, as well as for the disabled themselves. The presentational style (concise and engaging) emphasizes accessibility. Taken individually, each volume sets out the fundamentals of the topic it addresses, accompanied by compiled data and statistics, recommended further readings, a guide to organizations and associations, and other annotated resources, thus providing the ideal introductory platform and gateway for further study. Taken together, the series represents both a survey of major disability issues and a guide to new directions and trends and contemporary resources in the field as a whole.

Arts and Humanities

Viewpoints contains challenging essays on Freud, his fellows and critics, and on the contribution of modern figures such as Bruno Bettelheim, Thomas Azasz and Eric Berne. Charles Rycroft also pursues his enduring fascination with the place of memory and imagination in the work of artists and writers , such as Wilkie Collins, Rousseau and Sartre, and finally explores our puzzled conceptions of self hood and self awareness. Fluent, entertaining, imaginative and thought provoking, this collection confirms Rycroft as one of the most humane as well as the most distinguished of British psychoanalysts.

Between Identities and Places

Deaf Subjects

Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson

Disability and the Teaching of Writing brings together both ground-breaking new work and important foundational texts at the intersection of disability and composition studies. With practical suggestions for applying concepts to the classroom, this sourcebook helps instructors understand the issues involved in not only teaching students with disabilities but in teaching with and about disability as well.

A Critical Sourcebook

Disability and the Teaching of Writing

"Brueggemann's assault upon this long-standing rhetorical conceit is both erudite and personal; she writes both as a scholar and as a hard-of-hearing woman. In this broadly based study, she presents a profound analysis and understanding of rhetorical tradition's descendent disciplines that continue to limit deaf people, such as audiology and speech/language pathology.

Rhetorical Constructions of Deafness

Lend Me Your Ear

China’s dramatic transformation over the past fifteen years has drawn its share of attention and fear from the global community and world leaders. Far from the inward-looking days of the Cultural Revolution, modern China today is the world’s fourth largest economy, with a net product larger than that of France and the United Kingdom. And China’s dynamism is by no means limited to its economy: enrollments in secondary and higher education are rapidly expanding, and new means of communication are vastly increasing information available to the Chinese public. In two decades, the Chinese government has also transformed its foreign relations—Beijing is now consulted on virtually every key development within the region. However, the Communist Party of China still dominates all aspects of political life. The Politburo is still self-selecting, Beijing chooses province governors, censorship is widespread, and treatment of dissidents remains harsh. In China, leading experts provide an overview of the region, highlighting key issues as they developed in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Edited with an introduction by David B. H. Denoon, an authority on China, this volume of articles covers recent events and key issues in understanding this growing superpower. Organized into three thematic sections—foreign policy and national security, economic policy and social issues, and domestic politics and governance—the essays cover salient topics such as China's military power, de-communization, growing economic strength, nationalism, and the possibility for democracy. The volume also contains current maps as well as a “Recent Chronology of Events” which provides a decade's worth of information on the region, organized by year and by country. Contributors: Liu Binyan, David B.H. Denoon, Bruce J. Dickson, June Teufel Dreyer, Michael Dutton, Elizabeth Economy, Barry Eichengreen, Edward Friedman, Dru C. Gladney, Paul H. B. Godwin, Merle Goldman, Richard Madsen, Barry Naughton, Lucian W. Pye, Tony Saich, David Shambaugh, Robert Sutter, Michael D. Swaine, and Tyrene White.

In this probing exploration of what it means to be deaf, Brenda Brueggemann goes beyond any simple notion of identity politics to explore the very nature of identity itself. Looking at a variety of cultural texts, she brings her fascination with borders and between-places to expose and enrich our understanding of how deafness embodies itself in the world, in the visual, and in language. Taking on the creation of the modern deaf subject, Brueggemann ranges from the intersections of gender and deafness in the work of photographers Mary and Frances Allen at the turn of the last century, to the state of the field of Deaf Studies at the beginning of our new century. She explores the power and potential of American Sign Language—wedged, as she sees it, between letter-bound language and visual ways of learning—and argues for a rhetorical approach and digital future for ASL literature. The narration of deaf lives through writing becomes a pivot around which to imagine how digital media and documentary can be used to convey deaf life stories. Finally, she expands our notion of diversity within the deaf identity itself, takes on the complex relationship between deaf and hearing people, and offers compelling illustrations of the intertwined, and sometimes knotted, nature of individual and collective identities within Deaf culture.

Brenda Jo Brueggemann

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